North Korea slammed South Korean President Park Geun-hye again Thursday, calling her a "maniac" and a "mad dog" for her recent call for the communist country to improve its abysmal human rights conditions.

   Repeating her call on the North to enhance human rights, made during her address to the United Nations General Assembly earlier last month, Park told a Cabinet meeting Tuesday that the North Korean rights issue is Seoul's top priority in dealing with the communist country.

   North Korea has since repeatedly denounced Park's U.N. address with a shower of invectives, claiming Park's policy toward North Korea jeopardizes peace on the divided Korean Peninsula.

   In the latest denouncement, a spokesman for North Korea's powerful National Defense Commission told Korean Central Television Thursday that Park's remarks "only show plainly that her North Korea policy is in fact nothing more than a confrontational policy meant to crush our majestic socialist system to the death."

   The spokesman said that South Korea's push over the North Korean human rights condition also indicates that its unification policy is designed to topple the North Korean regime.

   "Using the human rights issue for a political plot is itself the most violent infringement of human rights," the spokesman noted, labeling Park as a "maniac," "top-notch warmonger" and "mad dog."

   The issue of the North's human rights had long been placed on the back burner in South Korea, where many people, mostly liberals, have shied away from the issue out of fear that it could strain inter-Korean relations.

   But the communist country is facing growing international pressure over its human rights record after the U.N. commission of inquiry formally accused the North of "grave, widespread and systematic" human rights violations.

   North Korea has long been accused of human rights abuses, ranging from holding hundreds of thousands of political prisoners in concentration camps to committing torture and carrying out public executions.

   The North has flatly denied accusations of its alleged rights abuses, describing them as a U.S.-led attempt to topple its regime.

The communist country also claims it has the world's most outstanding human rights conditions. (Yonhap)